Compassionate Communities

Compassionate Cities are communities that recognize that all natural cycles of sickness and health, birth and death, and love and loss occur everyday within the orbits of its institutions and regular activities. A compassionate city is a community that recognizes that care for one another at times of crisis and loss is not simply a task solely for health and social services but is everyone’s responsibility.

The charter is made up of a series of principles which cover a broad range of public health approaches to palliative and end of life care. It can be applied to cities and communities alike. By adoption of these principles, state institutions, workplaces, care organisations, the charitable sector and communities themselves can work together to make caring at end of life into bereavement, everyone’s responsibility, finding practical ways to help on a variety of different levels. .

The Compassionate City Charter is part of the Public Health Toolkit. The Toolkit covers the theory and practice in end of life care and is a joint document from Public Health England and the National Council for Palliative Care, written by Professor Kellehear and Aliki Karapliagkou.

The SW SCN on the 30th June 2015 held a work shop for champions of the charter who presented their interest in supporting and investing in a compassionate community in their area. Four areas demonstrated their vision for change: